Rugby union is a moderately popular team sport played in Romania with a tradition of more than 100 years. The Romanian men's national team are currently 18th in the World Rugby Rankings as of 14 June 2021. History Early history The game was introduced to Romania from France at the turn of the 20th century by students returning with rugby balls from their studies in Paris. Romanian rugby took root in Bucharest, established by students who had been to French universities, and by the capital's burgeoning middle class. Stadiul Român and seventeen other teams would be formed in Bucharest from 1913 onwards. The Romanian Rugby Championship was first contested in 1914. Romania played France for the first time in 1924. The nation's first international was played against the USA in 1919 six years after the game was first introduced. In 1931 a governing body was formed, the Federaţia Română de Rugby. The first team outside Bucharest was formed at an aircraft factory in Braşov in 1939. Communist period For the first half of the 20th century, Romanian rugby was fairly isolated, having most of its contact with France, and to an extent, the Iron Curtain in the second half did not help either. However, this "isolation" was broken when Rowe Harding took the Welsh team Swansea touring there, to play national champions, Locomotiva. On his return to the UK, Harding spoke highly of the Romanian game, speaking of its consistently high standard and of the passion of both the fans and the players, which he thought unparallelled in Europe outside the Five Nations. The tour and Harding's praise effectively opened up Romanian rugby to the rest of western Europe, sparking a number of tours travelling to and from the country. In 1955, a Romanian side toured England and Wales, playing Swansea, Cardiff, Bristol and the Harlequins, winning one, drawing two, and losing one. Later in 1955, the Romanians defeated Llanelli in Moscow, and then beat both Cardiff and Harlequins in Bucharest. Only France, who played Romania in front of almost 95,000 fans in Bucharest (in a preliminary match to a soccer international), could beat the Romanians, and that was only after an epic 16-15 battle. A generation of French school-trained coaches from the late 1940s and 1950s laid the foundations for national success in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. In 1974 Romania won against France 15 – 10 in Bucharest,